All posts tagged ‘CHI’

Last month, industry and academic experts in human-computer interaction gathered in Atlanta for their annual CHI conference. The event was a chance for practitioners and theorists alike to share their work across a wide domain. A few of these projects focused on the domestic design space and bringing families together.

Family Story Play

Hayes Raffle presented a paper describing the early prototyping and testing of Family Story Play, a teleconferencing device to connect grandparents and grandchildren. Raffle, a Senior Research Research Scientist for design and user experience at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, argued that young children don’t find talking on the phone to be intuitive. Rather than teaching kids how to stay engaged with disembodied voices, this design uses a shared activity with which most people are familiar—reading a book—to facilitate long-distance communication.

Hayes Raffle of Nokia demonstrates Family Story Play.

The prototype comprises of a folding wooden frame housing two Linux tablets, connected via USB to magnetic sensors and a book. One of the tablets serves as the video conferencing touch screen, showing Grandma and which page of the book she is currently reading. On the other screen is Elmo from Sesame Street, who acts as a catalyst for interaction as the generations read together. Thanks to the sensors and some creative input from Sesame Workshop, Elmo is aware of where they are in the storybook and can respond to content with pre-programmed prompts and reactions.